Angela Merkel vowed that she would deliver more “successful years for Germany”
as exit polls indicated a commanding lead for her party over the main
opposition.

Angela Merkel is heading for a third term as Germany’s chancellor, as exit polls showed she could even be on course for the historic achievement of an absolute majority in the country’s parliament.

An early projection by the state broadcaster ARD on Sunday evening showed Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU) winning 301 seats in the 598-seat Bundestag, enough to form a government without a coalition partner. Later projections suggested, however, that she could fall just short of an absolute majority.

Exit polls and early results put the CDU on 42.5 per cent of the vote, a lead of 17 points over the main opposition.

It had been expected that Mrs Merkel would be forced into a “grand coalition” with her main socialist opponents, the Social Democrats. The early results suggested that she might avoid this.

“This is a super result,” Mrs Merkel, 59, told cheering supporters. “We will do all we can in the next four years together to make them successful years for Germany. It is too early to say how we will proceed but today we should celebrate.”

The last time a party won an outright majority in a German election was in 1957, under the Christian Democrat leader Konrad Adenauer. Another four-year term for Mrs Merkel, would ultimately see her eclipse Margaret Thatcher as the European Union’s longest serving female head of government. The eurozone crisis has hit the careers of other European leaders, but not that of the Protestant pastor’s daughter from East Germany. Her current centre-Right coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), were heading for a bad night however, with just 4.7 per cent of yesterday’s vote, according to the exit poll — too little even to enter the German parliament.

This result, if confirmed, would see the FDP, a liberal pro-business party, drop out of the Bundestag for the first time in its history.

Christian Lindner, a former general secretary of the party, told ARD the result was “the most bitter hour since 1949”, for his party. The FDP has been the kingmaker of German politics since the first post-war elections in 1949. But it has struggled as Mrs Merkel’s junior coalition partner. While the chancellor has claimed the credit for Germany’s economic success, little of the FDP’s political programme has been enacted.

The liberal party’s share of the vote appeared to have been hit by a surge in support for Germany’s new anti-euro party, Alternative für Deutschland, which may even have won a big enough share of the vote to enter the Bundestag at the first attempt. The AfD was on 4.9 per cent in the exit poll, a fraction below the 5 per cent threshold needed to win seats.

Surveys show Mrs Merkel’s cautious handling of the eurozone crisis is strongly endorsed by the German public. After eight years in power, her approval ratings still regularly top 60 per cent.

The chancellor, who cast her vote at a polling station in Berlin yesterday, has presided over a strong economy with low unemployment.

She boasts of keeping Germany stable despite turmoil across the continent. Her social democrat challenger Peer Steinbrück has accused her of prescribing a “deadly dose” of austerity for the eurozone, saying the government’s crisis strategy lacks a “growth impulse”.

Germany’s new government will have to steer the country through a dramatic shift to renewable energy and cope with the needs of an ageing population; census figures show Germany has more people aged 65 and over than it has children.

“I voted for [the] CDU because they’re a serious party and in the last eight years they’ve really moved the country forward,” Jochen Anders, 58, a policeman, said after casting his ballot in Berlin.

The wild card in these elections is Alternative für Deutschland, a party born out of anger over the eurozone crisis, which calls for an orderly dismantling of the single currency.

Conscious of the need to fend off the eurosceptic threat, Mrs Merkel appealed to voters to defend the euro at a rally in Berlin on Saturday.